"Can do, Will Do - Did"

The Seabees, the Navy's construction battalions, were two years old this week. The birthday pointed up two facts: how unprepared the Navy was to fight a war in the first days of 1942; how versatile the Navy has become in two years of war. In 24 months this single new branch has grown into an organization of 262,000 men -- more men than the entire prewar Navy could muster.

A few men saw the need of such battalions in the autumn of 1941. On Dec. 28, blueprinted by Captain John Perry of the Civil Engineer Corps, U.S.N., they were launched. Their primary job: to build bases from which the Navy could fight a war with land-based support across 7,000 miles of Pacific ocean.

The Seabees went to work. When the Navy fighting units moved up, the Seabees moved with them. They carved off hillsides in Guadalcanal, bulldozed high ways, hacked out airfields. They moved into the Aleutians. They were with the invasion forces in North Africa, Sicily, Salerno. Today they are one of the Navy's most vital, loudest and lustiest outfits.

Makers, Fixers. More than any other branch of the fighting forces the Seabees represent the genius of the industrial U.S. They are makers, fixers, improvisers, builders -- blacksmiths, carpenters, crane operators, oilers, riggers, welders, plumbers; 59 building trades appear in their roster. Many ex-construction foremen are chief petty officers. Ex-civil, mechanical, and electrical engineers are commissioned officers. Average age of the Navy's jacks-of-all-trades is the middle 30's.

There are two other groups besides the construction men: stevedore battalions, who load and unload supplies; and maintenance units, who service the bases which their colleagues have built.

Enlistments closed last October. Today 115,000 Seabees are overseas, 79,000 are ready to go, the rest are in training. All have had twelve weeks' training in the U.S., have learned how to fight as well as construct.

Navy's Pride, Navy's Woe. Seabees are a rough & ready outfit, hardboiled, hard-driving ex-civilians who sneer at protocol and red tape and are always taking short cuts instead of "going through channels." They have had their tiffs with the always proper Navy. Stevedores, handling all sorts of supplies for the fighting forces, sometimes cut in on such items as new shoes, jackets, a case or two of Coke. Proud of the work they are doing, the Seabees have sometimes blown their horn too brassily for regular Navy ears. But they have proved both to Army & Navy how handy they can be.

The Trusting Bulldozer. During the Sicily campaign men of the 54th Battalion saved the lives of more than 175 soldiers trapped on a bombed and burning LST by erecting a bridge of pontoons to another ship. On another day they rescued a fleet of landing craft which was being pounded to pieces in the surf. Bulldozer operators steered their caterpillar machines into the waves and pushed the boats out into deeper, quieter water.

During one island assault in the Solomons, in the space of one day, under constant enemy bombing, they:

1) unloaded on the beach,

2) set up supply dumps,

3) bulldozed nine miles of roads,

4) dragged vital equipment to the dumps,

5) set up a temporary camp with foxholes and packed their gear and supplies into it,

6) built gun revetments,

7) helped haul heavy cannon ashore and emplaced them.

In the Aleutians they swung from ropes to chisel footholes in the solid rock of steep cliffs, and working on the mountain's precipitous wall in a driving rain constructed a track for a traveling carriage.

From pontoon gear, the Navy's all-purpose "mechano" set, they have built landing barges, floating drydocks, piers, floats for cranes to transform the sleepy, down-at-heel French colonial port of Noumea, New Caledonia, into one of the Navy's greatest advance bases.

Bars, Rings and Golf Courses. In their lighter moments they build swank officers' messes in the deep jungles with handsome bars and flagged terraces (to the envy of the hard-living Army). In the South Pacific they laid out golf courses, constructed baseball diamonds, volleyball courts and movie amphitheaters. On Tulagi, Chief Machinist Mate Bernard M. Vinck hung out three coconuts for a pawnshop sign, began making "Tulagi Academy" rings, like the cherished Naval Academy rings--except that Vinck's were snail shell "cat's eyes" set in aluminum stripped from shot-down Jap planes.

The Seabees' high-sounding motto: Construimus--Batuimus (We Build, We Fight!). Their favorite slogan, in words they can all read: "Can Do, Will Do--Did."

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